PROTESTS are taking place at more than 35 stations around the country to mark the 50th anniversary of the Beeching 'reshaping' report, which was followed by widespread closures of lines and stations in a bid to bring railway finances under control.
Now unions are claiming that the modern industry is confronted by 'frightening' staff and service cuts.
The protests have been organised by the TUC’s Action for Rail campaign, which says operators are preparing 'to embark upon a new programme of cost-cutting over the next six years' that could see more than 20,000 jobs put at risk, the closure of 675 ticket offices and a 50 per cent increase in the number of unstaffed stations, in response to the McNulty report.
The protestors say that if the economies go ahead, around one in 10 staff could lose their jobs and 3 out of 4 British stations would become unstaffed.
Action for Rail is claiming that operators are using 'Beeching-style tactics to slim down local services in a bid to make short-term savings'.
Campaigners have been handing out cards with a message about staff and servicing cuts, which urge passengers to tell their local MPs about their concern over what is happening.
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Rail firms seem intent on resurrecting the ghost of Dr Beeching, by embarking upon a new era of swingeing railway cuts.
“At a time when passengers are being forced to pay the most expensive train fares in Europe, they also face the prospect of unstaffed stations and guardless trains.
“Instead of chomping at the bit to save money, train operating companies should be looking to improve vital services at stations and on trains. There is no fairness in asking commuters to pay more for less.”
ASLEF general secretary Mick Whelan added: “Beeching’s vandalism was the worse example of the malaise of short-term thinking that has beleaguered our industry throughout its history.
"A successful rail network is planned carefully for decades ahead. It isn’t subjected to short-term, utterly-unimaginative sticking-plaster solutions like letting franchises, reducing services, poking up fares and cutting staff,” while his opposite number at the RMT, Bob Crow, said: “Beeching got it badly wrong half a century ago on the future of rail as a popular mode of travel. His butchery of rail services has been matched by more recent generations of politicians in the fragmentation and exploitation of privatisation. Now is the time to right the wrongs of the past and put an expanded, integrated and publicly-owned railway at the heart of future transport policy.”
TSSA general secretary Manual Cortes said: “Our railways are a success story despite the repeated attacks by the government, Beeching 50 years ago, privatisation twenty years ago and now McNulty which will see the closure of hundreds of booking offices and thousands of job losses.
"Further cuts are not the answer, as Beeching proved so comprehensively five decades ago. We need an affordable, socially-owned railway like the rest of Europe where passengers always come first.”